The Babysitting Debacle
by MollyBananahammock
Summary: Leonard and Penny's first night of watching over Baby Wolowitz doesn't go as smoothly as they'd hoped. Slightly fluffy little one-shot!


_Just a little one-shot that i literally dreamt up and since i havent uploaded anything in a long time, i figured i'd whack it out and put it up. Just a fluff piece, hope y'all enjoy!_

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"You don't have anything planned tonight do you?"

Penny, lying with her feet up on the sofa, wearing her sweatpants and her favourite baggy sweater, and eating from a family sized bag of potato chips, screwed her face up at Leonard as he closed the apartment door behind him and shrugged off his bag, "Do I _look_ like I have plans?" She said, stuffing more chips into her mouth.

"Right- yeah- no. You definitely don't."

"Why? You don't wanna go out somewhere do you?" She whined, "I had a crazy day at work and I know it's Friday night and all the young and fun people will be doing stuff but I literally don't want to move from this spot for the rest of the night."

"No, no. I don't have any plans for us to go out. But- um- what I have planned will involve you moving from that couch."

"Ugh, alright," Penny put down her bags of chips and patted her hands clean, "Do whatcha gotta do to me but I am pretty tired so don't expect too much enthusiasm on this end."

Leonard chuckled and shook his head, "No, as amazing as that offer to have unenthusiastic sex with you is, that's not what I'm talking about either."

"Oh, okay." She picked her bag of chips up again and dove straight in, "Will you hurry up and tell me what you actually _are_ talking about then because The Bachelor is about to hand out his roses and I don't wanna miss it."

After hanging his jacket off the back of his computer desk chair, Leonard joined Penny on the sofa and said, "Okay, so, at lunch Howard was telling us all about the new baby and how wonderful yet exhausting the whole experience is - like, you should have seen him, he was practically falling asleep into his burger right there at the table. Sheldon was _not_ impressed, he was all like-"

"Sweetie, can you get to the point quicker."

Leonard nodded, "Right- yeah- sorry, so basically I offered our assistance."

Penny's eyes narrowed, her hand stopped dead in the packet of chips. "What kind of assistance?"

A smile grew wide on Leonard's face, "I offered to babysit!"

"Oh no. You did not."

"I did!"

"Oh God."

"I mean, I didn't exactly say I would I was telling him that he had plenty of people around including the Godfather who would be happy to help out and take her off their hands for a little bit, you know to give them a rest and some alone time, and he didn't even let me finish my sentence before asking if I could take her tonight and he looked so excited about it that I couldn't say no. Besides, once I thought about it I figured it'd be the perfect chance for us to get a bit of practice."

"Practice?"

"Yeah. I know we're not planning on having kids yet but it couldn't hurt to have a few practice runs at it to see how we'd cope and stuff. It'd be like a baby beta test."

"Wouldn't it be an alpha test? Pretty sure you taught me that before."

"Techincally, yeah. But Baby Beta Test just sounds better." He grinned and squeezed her knee, "So, what do you think? Team Hofstadter versus Baby Wolowitz! Should be fun, right?"

"Leonard, sweetie," sitting up, Penny put down her packet of chips again, "I mean this in the nicest possible way, but what on Earth possessed you to do such a stupid, stupid thing without at least asking me first? I've been working hard all week do you really think that I wanna look after some screaming kid on my first night off? Really?"

"Oh come on. I've been working hard all week, too, but you've seen those two they're more zombie than human at this point. I couldn't say no, Howard got so excited at the idea."

"Yeah ya could! You just say," Penny put on her best impression of Leonard's voice, "'Uh no Howard. I have better things to do tonight than look after your screaming kid'. Have you heard that kid cry, Leonard? It's like the reincarnation of Howard's mom! Do you really want to listen to that all. Night. Long?"

"It won't be that bad. You're overreacting. I think it'll be fun!"

"Overreacting? Don't you remember what happened the last time we looked after something? We almost poisoned Raj's dog!"

"That was completely different!"

"How?"

"Well we're not going to leave a baby in here while we go have sex are we? And even if we did, the baby will be in one of those baby cot things so it'll be fine!"

"Oh trust me, we are not going off to have sex this time. Have you ever even looked after a baby before?"

"No… but how hard can it be? It's, you know, just a case of feeding and changing and rocking her to sleep… right? If Howard can do it I'm sure we can."

Panic clearly starting to set in, Penny was now pacing up and down with her hands on her waist, "nope. No. You're gonna have to call and cancel. We can't do this. I've never looked after a baby, you've never looked after a baby. We aren't even capable of taking care of a dog for one night. A dog, Leonard. I'm pretty sure a child is going to be harder than that. We'll break their baby, Leonard! And Howard and Bernie will never speak to us again because we will be the friends that broke their baby! You're going to have to cancel."

A few knocks at the door stopped Penny's minor meltdown dead, and she had just enough time to whisper, "oh crap," under her breath before the door opened and Bernadette, carrying baby Halley, and Howard buried under a mountain of bags came into their apartment.

Forcing a smile on her face, Penny went towards them with open arms, "Hey! Hi!" she said in a singing voice mixed with a touch of nervous laughter. "Leonard was just telling me the fun, _fun_ news that we get to have this little cutie tonight!" Penny held baby Halley's hand in her finger and in a baby voice said to her, "Yes you are. You're going to have the best time at Auntie Penny and Uncle Leonard's, yes you are," pulling away, she looked up at Bernadette and added with forced enthusiasm, "It's gonna be so fun. Yup, fun. Great, great fun."

"Yeah," Bernadette replied, smiling back through a grimace that showed her own displeasure at what was happening.

Despite her exhaustion and dire need for a long soothing bath uninterrupted by the sound of a crying child, Bernadette couldn't help but yell at Howard when he came home and informed her Leonard had offered to babysit for the night. Sure, she needed the break and part of her was excited for it, but despite Howard's assurances that everything would be fine and Leonard and Penny had their number if they needed any help or advice, all she could think of was that time they almost killed Raj's dog.

"Are you sure this is okay? Because if it's too short notice we can reschedule and you can have her another night?"

Before Penny could even begin to agree that maybe this would be for the best, Leonard said, "No, of course not. You guys deserve a night off and we are happy to help. Isn't that right, Penny?"

Penny shot Leonard a glare before turning to Bernadette with a smile, "Yeah, definitely. We- uh- we'll be fine. You guys relax for a night. We got this." She hoped she sounded more confident than she actually was.

Half an hour later, Howard and Bernadette were gone and Leonard and Penny were left with a baby, a living room scattered with baby toys, a fridge full of baby milk and a whiteboard of precise instructions.

"This isn't so bad." Penny said as she rocked Halley to sleep and placed her gently into the travel cot they had set up in their bedroom.

"Yeah," Leonard whispered back as they looked down on her. "I told you it'd be fine." He put his arm around Penny and squeezed her shoulder. "We got this."

Penny switched on the baby monitor and the left the room as quietly as possible. A quick check of the instructions Howard had written on Leonard's whiteboard told them Halley wasn't due to be fed for at least another hour, and Penny smiled to herself, thinking that she had plenty of time to watch the rest of the recorded episode of The Bachelor she had been watching earlier before Halley woke up expecting to be fed.

It had been, as she realised a mere fifteen minutes later, an extremely naïve thought.

"It's okay," Leonard said, confidently rising from his chair when the almighty wail came from down the hall (at this point they both realised the baby monitor was a pointless piece of equipment. Like her mother and late grandmother, this kid's voice travelled through walls), "She probably just wants fed early. I'll go get her, you get the milk ready. Go Team Hofstadter!" He called over his shoulder, fist pumping the air as he headed down the corridor.

"There, there. There, there," he said to the screaming child as he walked her into the kitchen, patting her on the back to help soothe her, though it seemed to make no difference what-so-ever.

"So do we like, just put these bottles into the microwave or what?"

"I don't know, isn't there instructions on the board for this?"

"No I already checked."

"Oh." Leonard frowned and started to bounce a little as he whispered "Shh" into Halley's ear. "It's okay your dinner is coming soon I promise. Google it," he said to Penny.

"Right – yes! Good idea!" Penny took out her phone and a minute or so later (though with a screaming child in the room I felt like much longer), said, "Okay so it says on here we just have to run it under warm water for a couple of minutes." She shrugged, "That's simple enough."

While Penny warmed the breast milk, Leonard walked Halley around the apartment, his confidence in their babysitting abilities beginning to waiver with every cry filled lap.

"Okay, got it!" Penny hurriedly handed Leonard the bottle.

Suddenly, a satisfying silence fell upon the room as Leonard sat down on his chair and fed Halley.

"It's beautiful isn't it?"

Leonard grinned as he looked down at the suckling baby, staring with her wide brown eyes up at him. "She really is."

"I don't mean her, I mean the quiet. It's beautiful."

"She'd only been crying ten minutes," Leonard chuckled. "But yeah, I can see why Howard was so keen to hand her off on us."

"Okay pass her over, this is too cute I want a turn." After handing Halley over Leonard headed to the kitchen to make something to eat, glancing up occasionally at the girls on the sofa with some part of him hoping that today might encourage Penny's maternal instincts to surface.

In all their time together the subject of children had only come up a handful of times, and while he was happy enough with that before, seeing Howard and Bernadette take this step in their relationship made him eager to follow suit some time in the near future.

If anything, their time with Halley tonight might start up a real conversation about it, and that was the least he was hoping for.

When he returned to the living area with his hastily made sandwich, Penny had Halley on her shoulder and was attempting to burp her.

"You know what, I think you might be right, we got this." Penny said with a smile, "From all the stories Bernie has told me I expected her to be screaming the place down twenty-four-seven. But this isn't so bad is it," she was talking to Halley now, her baby voice in full swing, "No it's not. You like it here at Auntie Penny and Uncle Leonard's don't you? Yes you do." Penny bounced Halley a little and instantly regretted it, "Aw crap she just got sick down my shoulder. Take her while I go change."

After stuffing the last of his sandwich into his mouth, Leonard took Halley from Penny. The change, however, didn't sit well and an ear splitting cry erupted from the little girl.

"What the hell did you do?" Penny exclaimed, rushing back down the hallway before she'd even had a chance to change.

"Nothing, I swear! She just started screaming. I don't think she likes me."

Penny took Halley back and did her best to soothe her back to a peaceful state, but her attempts were futile.

Over the next few hours they took it in turns to walk her around the apartment, they tried feeding her again, they changed her diaper and walked her around some more, they put her down for a while and left her to cry, but nothing seemed to work.

The longer she cried, the more frantic and desperate Leonard and Penny became.

"Why wont this kid shut up!" Penny exclaimed as she rocked her from side to side. "I swear to god this isn't a human child, it's the devil's spawn is what it is."

"'She', Penny. She's a 'she' not an 'it'."

"Do you hear the noise coming from this kid? She's no 'she' she's an 'it'! This is all your fault, you know that? If you hadn't agreed to babysit I'd be sitting happily on that sofa watching crappy TV instead of being _this_ close to tearing the ears out of my head!"

"Look, listen, we need to calm down. This can't be helping her."

"What are you doing?" Penny asked as Leonard headed to his computer. "No way are you stopping to play video games!"

"I'm asking Google, again. There must be some tips to stop a crying baby on there."

As he was scrolling for an answer, Sheldon knocked on their door in his signature way, but both Leonard and Penny yelled "GO AWAY, SHELDON!" before he could even think of entering the apartment.

The next half an hour was spent trying every tip Google had to offer, and while some of them provided a few moments of quiet, none of them really worked.

"This is hopeless," Penny slumped down on the chair and put her head in her hands, "We can't do this, okay, we're obviously just as horrible at looking after kids as we are dogs. We're gonna have to call Howard and Bernie and get them to take her back."

"It's after eleven we can't do that. And we're not hopeless she's probably just missing her mom and dad this is her first time away from home and she's not used to us yet. Maybe we should take her out for a walk. The fresh air might work."

Penny shot him a glare, "You really expect me to leave the apartment looking like this? There's sick on my top and in my hair, Leonard!"

"Fine, I'll take her! But you'll have to help I can't carry her pushchair down all those stairs by myself."

Penny rolled her eyes and huffed, "Fine. But I'm so sick of helping pick up the crap from the mistakes you make."

"What mistakes?!"

"Uh, offering to babysit the devil child and blowing up the freakin' elevator for a start!"

"Technically, Sheldon threw the bomb into there so why aren't you yelling at him?"

"This has nothing to do with Sheldon! Besides, he was trying to save your dumb ass so ultimately the blame falls at you!"

'You know, just for once I'd love to see you take my side instead of Sheldon's!"

"Oh my God not with this crap again. Just get the coat on the baby and get her out of here before my ears stat bleeding."

"FINE!"

Penny helped Leonard down the stairs with Halley and then stormed back upstairs, determined to enjoy the cry-free time with a nap on the sofa, but filled with so much adrenaline from their silly argument that she couldn't relax. Instead, she tidied up the apartment, changed her top, took a washcloth to the sick in her hair and the bits on her neck, and then found herself wondering how Leonard was getting on. She thought of calling him, but then realised if he _had_ gotten her to sleep, the ringing of his phone might wake her up again. Deciding it better to text him, she found her phone on the coffee table and, after replying to the messages Bernadette had sent that she hadn't seen earlier (lying through her teeth and telling her everything was going well), she sent a quick 'how are you getting on?' to Leonard, but the tone coming from the kitchen island told her he'd left his phone behind.

It was then that she realised he'd have no way to let him know he was downstairs and in need of her assistance to get Halley back upstairs, and it was then that she decided this apartment building wasn't suited for a baby and that she and Leonard would have to move when they had theirs, because there was no way she was spending her life carrying pushchairs and car seats up four flights of stairs.

Grabbing a coat, Penny made her way down to the lobby and sat on the bottom stairs while she waited on Leonard returning, wondering while she did just where she and Leonard would move to when they did have children. She didn't fancy living in a tall apartment building even if it did have an elevator. A big house like Howard and Bernadette's would be nice, with a big garden for the kids to play in and maybe even space for a dog or cat. She'd never seriously thought about it before, but that was what she wanted.

"What are you doing here?"

Leonard's voice pulled her from her thought process. "You left your phone upstairs. I knew you'd have no way to let me know you were back to help you get her back upstairs so I waited."

"Oh. Have you been here long?"

Penny shrugged, "About fifteen minutes maybe," she nodded to Halley, asleep in her pushchair, "She's finally asleep."

"Yeah. I'm just as surprised as you are."

Penny laughed, "Okay let's get this girl back upstairs."

Carefully, they each grabbed one side of the chair and carried her upstairs, reluctant to risk taking her out too soon.

Thankfully, they made it upstairs without waking her, and once inside they left her to sleep a little longer in it before taking her out and putting her back into her travel cot.

"What time is it?" Leonard asked, yawning as he threw himself on the sofa.

"Almost one am." Penny said, catching his yawn and joining him.

"I want to go to bed but I'm scared to go in that room in case we wake the beast."

Penny laughed, "Yeah, me too. Maybe we just sleep out here tonight."

"Yeah…"

"Yeah." She let out a soothing sigh, glad to finally be resting, and then said, "And listen, I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier," she took Leonard's hand and squeezed it, "I was just stressed out… This wasn't exactly fun, but we do need the practice, so I'm glad we did this tonight." Penny turned her head to the side and saw Leonard had fallen asleep, "okay, never-mind, I'll tell you tomorrow." She kissed him on the forehead and rested her head on his shoulder, and then, when a few hours later Halley woke up and started to cry again, Penny ran a bottle of milk under the tap and went to get her.

To her surprise, this time, as soon as Penny picked her up her cries faded a little, "Good girl, shhh, good girl. Uncle Leonard's sleeping, sweetie, we don't wanna wake him up, okay?"

Walking her slowly around the room, Penny fed her and put her back to sleep without fuss.

The next morning came around quickly. Leonard woke up confused, at first, as to why he was on the sofa and still in the clothes he was wearing yesterday.

"Look, Halley! Uncle Leonard finally woke up!" Penny walked down the hallway with Halley in her arms. "Yay!"

"How long have you been up? You should have woke me."

"A couple of hours. You looked like you needed the sleep so I didn't bother. Besides it was your fault she started crying yesterday so I didn't wanna risk it." Penny grinned and stuck her tongue out at him. "I was about to bathe her though if you wanna help."

"She is cute, isn't she?" Leonard said after they'd bathed and clothed her.

"When she's quiet and going to sleep, yeah." Penny sat on the armrest of the chair and caressed Halley's cheek as she lay in Leonard's arms.

"I honestly didn't think it'd be as tough as this."

Penny shrugged, "It wasn't so bad."

"Don't lie. It was horrific."

Penny laughed, "Okay, yeah, it was. But it was her first time staying overnight somewhere new and we got so stressed out so that couldn't have helped. We'll get better at it."

"You really want to do this again?"

"I do." She nodded and smiled. "I want her to like coming to stay at our place."

"Yeah, me too." Leonard leaned up and gave Penny a quick kiss. "I'm so proud of us. I'm exhausted and need to lie down in a dark quiet room for a day or two, but I'm proud."

"Team Hofstadter for the win, right?"

Leonard held up a fist and Penny hit it with her own, "Damn right."


End file.
